Europe's largest lender, HSBC, is imposing a hiring and pay freeze across the bank globally in 2016, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Like numerous other global banks, HSBC is in the midst of a cost-cutting drive to boost profitability and returns to shareholders, and is pushing through with plans for annual cost savings of up to $5 billion by 2017. Europe's biggest bank said in June that it planned to slash nearly one in five jobs and shrink its investment bank by a third in response to sluggish economic growth and tighter global regulation of bank balance sheet risk.

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain's fourth-largest supermarket operator Morrisons on Sunday said it was cutting the price of more than 1,000 products, with an average drop of 19 percent across fruit and vegetable lines. The firm said it was launching a rolling program of reductions that will see the price of selected items cut for a minimum of three months. Morrisons said it would use it own fresh food manufacturing business to help keep prices down. …

Volkswagen is not under pressure to sell its trucks business to raise cash as it faces billions of euros in costs after admitting to rigging emissions tests, management board member Andreas Renschler told a German newspaper. “The operating results of the Volkswagen group are good, despite everything. There won't be a fire sale,” Renschler, who also heads the trucks business at VW, was quoted as saying in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (FAS) published on Sunday.

(Reuters) – Berkshire Hathaway Inc , the conglomerate run by Warren Buffett, has resumed its purchases of Phillips 66 stock, and spent roughly $832 million in January to boost its stake even as the oil refiner's profit margins narrowed. According to a regulatory filing on Friday night, Berkshire paid about $198 million this week for 2.54 million Phillips 66 shares, its first purchases of the stock since Jan. 14. For all of January, Berkshire bought 10.81 million shares, giving it 72.29 million overall, or a roughly 13.7 percent stake in Houston-based Phillips 66.

Nokia and Samsung are expected to settle their two-year patent dispute within days, with analysts forecasting a one-time payment of hundreds of millions of euros for the Finnish company. Nokia entered into a binding arbitration with South Korea's Samsung in 2013 to settle additional compensations for a five-year period starting from early 2014. The International Chamber of Commerce's arbitration court is due to make its ruling on the issue imminently.

Stock market investors who spent January swayed by oil prices, economic weakness in China and central bank speculation may continue to do that next week, even though it should be a dramatic one for earnings reports and economic data. Fourth-quarter 2015 earnings reports coming from Internet leader Alphabet and Exxon Mobil , an old-economy company hit by falling oil prices, will spotlight the yin and yang of Corporate America. If shares of Alphabet, Google's parent, rally in response to the strong results that are expected, it could displace Apple as the biggest company in the world.

The Federal Reserve probably needs to keep U.S. interest rates lower for longer given headwinds from weak global economic growth, a stronger dollar and an unexpectedly sustained drop in oil prices, a top Fed official suggested on Friday. San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams told reporters he now sees slightly slower growth, slightly higher unemployment, and about a tenth of a percent lower inflation this year than he had expected in December, when the Fed raised rates for the first time in nearly a decade. At the time, officials at the Fed, the U.S. central bank, had as a group expected about four further rate hikes this year, and Williams had said that was in line with his own expectation.

Oil prices rose on Friday, rebounding more than 25 percent from 12-year lows hit last week and cutting losses for the month, on prospects of a deal between major exporters to cut production and curb one of the biggest supply gluts in history. Meanwhile, the U.S. oil drilling rig count fell for the sixth straight week with more cuts seen, oil services company Baker Hughes Inc said.

At one point last week, the S&P's loss for 2016 reached 11 percent before recovering to end the month down 5 percent. Global equities got a surprise boost on Friday after Japan's central bank cut a benchmark rate below zero to stimulate its economy. Microsoft shares jumped 5.83 percent on better-than-expected results.